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Wells helpfully pointed the class to this article from NPR’s Codeswitch Blog, which tackles the history of the phrase “Indian Giver.” While Wells rightfully brought this up in terms of the ways in which terminology can be (knowingly or unknowingly) insulting, I’d also encourage all of you to think about it in terms of the trade practices we spoke about on Tuesday. In the context of cementing relationships through trade, civility and exchange, the expectation that gifts be reciprocated begins to look less like rudeness, and more like a part of commercial negotiations.
For more on mutual misunderstandings in French-Indian trade, see Nancy Shoemaker’s article “Body Language: The Body as a Source of Sameness and Difference in Eighteenth-Century American Indian Diplomacy East of the Mississippi.” in Janet Moore Lindman and Michele Lise Tarter’s edited volume A Centre of Wonders: The Body in Early America.